[HN Gopher] Brave's use of direct mailers
___________________________________________________________________
Brave's use of direct mailers
Author : open-paren
Score : 83 points
Date : 2022-06-04 16:15 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (brave.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (brave.com)
| mmastrac wrote:
| We're all about your privacy, but we have a big database with
| your name, address and who-knows-what-else that we're using for
| our own promotional purposes.
|
| How is this different than all the other startups in the world
| that trade your privacy for their gain?
| rpdillon wrote:
| They say they're using the USPS's EDDM tool, and they link to
| it in the post. I clicked, and skimmed until I found this:
|
| > Choose the neighborhoods in the EDDM Online Tool where your
| customers live. Use the tool to target customers by specific
| demographics such as age, household size, and income.
|
| So it seems like the database belongs to the government rather
| than the startup. It doesn't appear that this had any actual
| privacy impact, beyond the perception that Brave is targeting
| folks by name.
| Vorh wrote:
| As far as I know, the database is owned by the USPS, and they
| can't do their job _without_ that information. You can dislike
| Brave for buying access to the information, or dislike USPS for
| selling said information. But the information is already
| collected by USPS so they can do their job.
| edf13 wrote:
| Even if the database contains banding by household income for
| example? Why does the USPS need that to do their job? Brave
| doesn't show what targeting was used...
| User23 wrote:
| The US Census is public record and breaks down all kinds of
| demographic information by zip code. The USPS is almost
| certainly just using census data. Even if they didn't
| provide the convenience, a marketer could easily replicate
| what they currently do.
|
| If you have a problem with the US Census Bureau collecting
| demographic data or making it public, those are certainly
| valid positions to hold. However, point your ire at the
| right target.
| st3fan wrote:
| Be careful with the right wording here: this USPS service is
| not selling any data.
|
| It is just delivering snail mail.
|
| The only data flow here is from Brave to USPS: please send
| our mailing to this definition of the target group.
|
| USPS does not send Brave a list of addresses or even names.
| Brave does not give USPS a list of addresses or names.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| "our EDDM vendor" seems to imply a third party getting the
| addresses to print (because there's no need to keep the
| vendor name secret if it's the USPS), but maybe they just
| thought it sounds better than saying "the USPS".
| rrdharan wrote:
| This is exactly how Google operates yet many folks seem to
| define / consider that as "selling the data".
|
| It's really about "leveraging access to / monetizing the
| data".
|
| The point is that by paying for EDDM, Brave is funding and
| supporting that financial model (targeted advertising)
| which many folks who use Brave want to eliminate.
|
| So some amount of annoyance expressed by their users makes
| sense to me.
| robin_reala wrote:
| That's not nuanced enough. Information isn't just information
| to a user, it's information combined with purpose. A user
| would expect the USPS to use address data to deliver them
| mail. They would expect the USPS to sell their address data
| for the purpose of (gratuitous hyperbole) targeting a drone
| strike. In this case, I would doubt the user would expect
| their address data to be sold by the USPS for direct mail
| shots.
|
| This is the essence of GDPR really. The legal basis of
| "legitimate interest" means you don't have to seek consent
| because of course a user would expect you to process that
| data in the course of the provided service. To go outside of
| that service you need to get explicit and informed opt-in
| consent.
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| Why can't they do their job without that information?
|
| You can send a letter to an address without the USPS
|
| a.) Having the address in their database
|
| b.) Knowing who is living there
|
| So Brave, the privacy company, is using a service that
| collects data about people.
| gtvwill wrote:
| Crikey brave really come across like the telemarketing products
| of yesteryear. Kinda looks useful from the outside, but doesn't
| actually do anything better mostly just worse than all the optio
| a you had before.
|
| Lol the only people I've encountered in the wild who had brave on
| their systems were folks here in Aus who were deep down the
| rabbit hole of American Christian right wing nut job conspiracy
| theories, like full maga supporting fruit loops.
| My70thaccount wrote:
| password4321 wrote:
| I like Brave.
|
| But they always seem to be "asking forgiveness rather than
| permission".
| hunterb123 wrote:
| Or they are just addressing the hyped up outrage generated by
| certain people.
| gruez wrote:
| Given that EDDM is an official offering from USPS, and that
| USPS is a government agency, it's reasonable to conclude that
| this activity is state sanctioned. In that case what permission
| do they need to ask for?
| drusepth wrote:
| Not the best vibe from a company whose livelihood is dependent
| on convincing more and more people to trust them with more and
| more data.
| annoyingnoob wrote:
| Seems like their business model is at odds with their privacy
| goals.
| My70thaccount wrote:
| fortyseven wrote:
| Once again reinforcing my initial vibe of Brave being sketchy as
| shit.
| [deleted]
| hunterb123 wrote:
| They used a gov run mailer and they don't have access to the
| database.
|
| Would you like to expand on your "initial vibe" and Brave being
| "sketchy as shit"?
| longrod wrote:
| This little stunt by Brave was clearly not the right move.
| Marketing is a necessity but if you sacrifice one of the core
| principals of your product i.e. privacy & security, what's the
| point?
|
| The scenario is something like this:
|
| Random person: recieves a physical mail right after installing
| Brave.
|
| Brave: we are so so private and don't ever sell or use your data.
|
| Random person: how did you get my address then right after I
| literally installed Brave?
|
| Brave: you see, it's very private because we can't see the
| address or who the mail is going to go to. We just contracted a
| mailer who sent this marketing newsletter to everyone in their
| database.
|
| Random person: ...
|
| Brave: maybe you didn't understand but we, the brave company,
| didn't see who the mail would go to. That's privacy right?
|
| Random person: _deletes Brave_
|
| The problem here is that a privacy oriented company is accepting
| and making use of a very non-private method to spread privacy and
| Brave. Contradictory in it's core.
|
| I still like Brave and what they represent. I am a fan. They do a
| lot of things right but this was baffling. I don't know how they
| could allow something like this to pass through the filter...
| gruez wrote:
| >Random person: recieves a physical mail right after installing
| Brave.
|
| >Brave: we are so so private and don't ever sell or use your
| data.
|
| >Random person: how did you get my address then right after I
| literally installed Brave?
|
| Can't you make the argument for any sort of ad? eg.
|
| >Random person: sees a static banner ad[1] right after
| installing Brave.
|
| >Brave: we are so so private and don't ever sell or use your
| data.
|
| >Random person: how did you know to show me a brave ad right
| after I literally installed Brave?
|
| Are you basically arguing that brave shouldn't advertise at
| all?
|
| [1] static in the sense it's placed there by the publisher for
| all visitors, rather than through some sort of ad network
| longrod wrote:
| This is a very interesting situation for privacy respecting
| products.
|
| Say you want to advertise to your potential audience, what do
| you do? You have very few privacy respecting methods.
|
| 1. You go with passive advertising like billboards, TV ads,
| blog ads etc. Not particularly effective since you can't do
| it across the world.
|
| 2. You go with something like Google with a huge ad network.
| But if you go with Google...you are tapping into and making
| use of personal data of your very own privacy respecting
| people. In a way, you are feeding the beast.
|
| Which method should such a product go with? Which method
| would conform with their privacy respecting model best? Which
| would bring in a lot of users?
|
| Not all ads are bad. Not all ad networks are bad. Some, very
| few, do it ethically. I think Brave itself is one of those.
| But these networks are very, very small compared to Google.
|
| At all time the temptation is there to go with targeted ads
| because it's the most effective & affordable way to get
| potential users. The moment you do, are you still privacy
| respecting?
|
| Edit: as to your question about banner ads. It depends. If
| you are using Google's banner ads they aren't static by any
| means. Google targets and rotates based on their huge
| database of user data. But if you just put a banner ad
| somewhere on a blog etc, that comes under the category of
| passive/non-targeted marketing.
| notahacker wrote:
| Brave is basically arguing that third party marketing-
| distribution networks which use personally identifiable
| information to target ads are bad.
|
| I think it's pretty reasonable to suggest that exposing that
| they do so via a third party marketing distribution network
| which uses personally identifiable information to target ads
| may have been a misstep without arguing that means they can't
| advertise at all
|
| Particularly when the "but _we_ don 't see the personally
| identifiable information that the third party we paid used to
| advertise to you" applies to everyone paying Facebook or
| Google to show ads too...
| gtvwill wrote:
| Lol the problem here is assuming privacy is one of braves main
| strengths or even goals. When it's not lol. Brave makes money
| off tracking you and exposing your data, not in keeping it
| private.
| longrod wrote:
| Do they actually? I would be interested in reading some
| literature about this. How have they used/exposed/sold user's
| data?
| cozzyd wrote:
| > sacrifice one of the core principals
|
| One of the more amusing principle/principal mixups I've seen.
| (Their principals must indeed be brave if this is a potential
| outcome).
| longrod wrote:
| Haha. Auto correct working its magic. Unfortunately, can't
| edit it out since its too late.
| mixedCase wrote:
| > Marketing is a necessity but if you sacrifice one of the core
| principals of your product i.e. privacy & security, what's the
| point?
|
| Because that is not even remotely the case as is clearly stated
| in the article in the first few sentences.
| longrod wrote:
| The fact that they have to explain themselves with an article
| speaks a lot. Was this specific method necessary? I am sure
| it cost them quite a bit and were the results worth it?
|
| How many people would read the article? How many people would
| simply run away from Brave due to this? How many people would
| care to research it a bit more?
|
| Privacy is such a sensitive topic for privacy-respecting
| people that most of the time even a little doubt blows up the
| ship. This was a huge risk taken by Brave and unnecessarily
| so because they didn't do anything extraordinary by sending
| people mail.
|
| Moreover, can this one article stop the negative sentiment
| from spreading? I don't think so.
| flaviut wrote:
| From the second paragraph:
|
| > Since 2020, Brave has been experimenting with direct mail via
| the United States Postal Service's Every Door Direct Mail
| (EDDM) program. EDDM allows businesses in the US to create and
| distribute mailers to addresses across one or more ZIP Codes.
|
| I'm not sure where you got "tracking" from, but they're just
| sending mail to every address in a zip code.
| al_borland wrote:
| While this is true, it doesn't help the optics from a
| customer point of view. Granted the number of people in a zip
| code who just download Brave will be small, but those are
| your new customers and will be freaked out. They will tell
| their friends. People who are learning about Brave from the
| mailing will question how Brave got their info to mail them
| (even if that isn't reality) and see the mailing as not
| respecting their privacy, thus killing their message.
|
| This whole idea was simply bad. Billboards, TV, and stadium
| advertisements would have gone over much better if they
| wanted some old-school methods. It gets in front of a lot of
| people with no questions about privacy or targeting involved.
| igetspam wrote:
| I got one of these yesterday. I'm uninstalling Brave and going
| back to Firefox
| happytiger wrote:
| Wait until they start sending CDs...
| Buttons840 wrote:
| I have a cynical take on the prevalence of marketing in our
| society. This may not apply to Brave specifically, but while
| we're on the topic of marketing:
|
| I wonder if growing wealthy inequality means that consumers
| simply don't have enough wealth to make honest exchanges worth
| while. The powers-that-be look for ways to "grow" and consider
| making an honest product and simply selling it, but the common
| people don't have enough wealth to give in exchange for an honest
| product, so instead they put their money into advertising and
| other "growth" efforts.
|
| Brave may be an example of this, what if consumers simply don't
| have enough wealth to finance the development of an honest
| consumer focused browser? In that case you would expect to see
| companies like Brave, even if their intentions are good, turning
| to less honest sources of income.
|
| Consumer focused software seems to be on the decline, and for the
| first time I'm wondering if this is due to large scale economic
| reasons.
| ElvisTrout wrote:
| Marketing is very profitable. Sadly word of mouth is a
| painfully slow way to sell even a good product.
| sha256sum wrote:
| I feel like the criticism towards Brave ITT is unjustified. This
| is a USPS service which is available to businesses. If you're a
| privacy conscious person in the US, you've likely opted out of
| this list.
|
| Brave is reaching the people who may not have done this, to the
| end of getting regular folks to know their alternatives against
| big tech companies.
|
| I guess don't get the ire, or what the expectation is for them to
| grow. Would you rather them take out Google or Facebook ads? /s
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| You can't opt out. After multiple calls and complaints to USPS
| and speaking to the Postmaster General I was given two options.
| Either I could STFU and keep getting them along with my other
| mail, or I could opt to not have any mail delivered anymore.
| And... People wonder why the USPS shouldn't be a bank.
| arthurcolle wrote:
| That doesn't seem right.
| https://consumer.ftc.gov/articles/how-stop-junk-mail
|
| Which Postmaster General did you speak to again?
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| If you look at what posted that has nothing to do with USPS
| Direct Mail. I also can't tell you how bad of an idea it is
| to pay money and register with advertisers who are already
| sending you unsolicited mail.
|
| > Which Postmaster General did you speak to again?
|
| I filed a complaint here:
|
| https://www.uspsoig.gov/form/file-online-complaint
|
| And got a call back around 2015.
| morganvachon wrote:
| Here's the fun thing: I _have_ opted out of blind mailers from
| the USPS, yet I got one of these Brave mailers last week with
| my name on it (I 'm in the Atlanta area). Just one more reason
| of many for me to never, ever let Brave near any of my devices.
| dinkleberg wrote:
| That sounds like an unhealthy paranoia.
|
| Which seems more likely? The USPS is delivering spam mail
| against the wishes of the recipient (I still get spam mail
| weekly despite opting out) or a privacy-focused company is
| snooping on your devices to steal your personal info (so they
| can send you mailers?).
| morganvachon wrote:
| > _or a privacy-focused company is snooping on your devices
| to steal your personal info (so they can send you
| mailers?)_
|
| I never said that. I don't want Brave on my devices due to
| their past bad behavior: lying, stealing money from
| creators in their affiliate program, redirecting legitimate
| links to shady crypto sites, running a crypto pyramid
| scheme, and so on. This is just the latest in a long list
| of reasons not to use their software.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| Wait what?
|
| I'm really confused about what was going on here, what was the
| nature of the alleged mistake, and why it was a mistake or bad.
| kylehotchkiss wrote:
| Safari is the most private mainstream browser IMO. Private relay,
| third party tracking blockers, good enough support for 1Blocker
| to keep my laptop fan down. I use brave for work though since
| it's closest to chrome and the dev tools are better. Their
| slightly annoying shenanigans every few months still seem better
| than Google having a high quality data stream directly from the
| browser itself
| user3939382 wrote:
| Clearly someone from AOL has slipped into management.
| sbussard wrote:
| What I don't understand is how their vendor even got the names of
| the recipients. That is the violation of privacy, the mailed
| letters are only the symptom of a poorly designed system.
| gruez wrote:
| It seems conceivable that the vendor doesn't have the
| address/name list, but USPS.
| Animats wrote:
| Since the outside of all US mail is imaged and stored by the USPS
| and shared with other government agencies, [1] Brave just gave
| its user list to the US Government.
|
| [1] https://www.newsweek.com/postal-service-photographs-every-
| pi...
| VanTheBrand wrote:
| No it didn't. Read the article. They sent this to entire zip
| codes. It's not targeted at users. If you are a user and you
| also got it, that's a coincidence. All your neighbors in the
| same zip code also got it whether they are users or not,
| Animats wrote:
| Then why does their mailing piece say "New Brave User"?
|
| Their spin control says they sent it to entire zip codes. Is
| there independent confirmation of that?
| gruez wrote:
| > Then why does their mailing piece say "New Brave User"?
|
| You're reading too much into this. If you look at the other
| elements of the ad, it's clear that the purpose of the ad
| is to get you to install brave, which makes you a "new
| brave user".
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| Very very interesting. Another way brave is breaking the status
| quo and making the world a better place. /s
| miguelmurca wrote:
| What? The article is apologizing for a mistake (with
| questionable implications, as pointed out by other comments).
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| Sorry missed the /s on my comment.
| miguelmurca wrote:
| Ah, my bad. Can't delete the original reply anymore, sorry.
| bzxcvbn wrote:
| Creating paper waste is making the world a better place?
| pyuser583 wrote:
| Direct mail is a very effective means of marketing.
|
| The recipient has to actively deal with it, and is almost
| always the "head of household." If you want to send ads that
| are interacted with by someone capable of making a purchase -
| mailing works.
|
| I don't know if "waste" is quote right.
| seized wrote:
| Maybe you closely analyse mailers/junk mail/etc but most
| people ignore it. If it's not an envelope it goes into my
| recycling bin directly as a stack.
|
| It is waste, especially for people who don't recycle.
| ntoskrnl wrote:
| Waste is exactly right.
| https://truthinadvertising.org/articles/the-cost-of-junk-
| mai...
| schmichael wrote:
| I would take quite a bit of tracking in exchange for no more junk
| mailers like this. They seem to be missing the forest for the
| trees: sure tracking is problematic, but Annoying Ads, however
| you define them, have always been the biggest pain point. Whether
| it's popups, popunders, interstitials, autoplaying, made to look
| like news, or killing trees to fill your mailbox: we've always
| been at war with annoying ads.
|
| This seems like an indication Brave is actually out of touch with
| what consumers want: less obnoxious ads. They're so focused on
| tracking they're willing to annoy people with junk mail.
| user3939382 wrote:
| dmachoice.org and optoutprescreen.com allows you to get rid of
| 99% of junk mail.
|
| If you want to go deeper: https://optout.lexisnexis.com/
| https://risk.lexisnexis.com/prescreened-offers-optout
| Barrin92 wrote:
| To me these little things are what turned me away from using the
| browser. Every time you install it somewhere you have to manually
| turn all the crypto ads off, it's the only thing that doesn't
| sync across devices.
|
| These little nudges and 'growth hacks' if you will including that
| mailing campaign is exactly what I don't want in software that
| allegedly puts the user first. It doesn't seem like there is
| genuine innovation in Brave, they still rely on ads, and sending
| people physical spam in the mail or showing you 'privacy
| respecting' ones online obfuscated with a bunch of attention
| tokens doesn't really change anything.
| prepend wrote:
| > including that mailing campaign is exactly what I don't want
| in software that allegedly puts the user first
|
| I don't get what the issue is with the mailers. The names being
| present or not isn't really important as they just bought
| distribution lists and mailed stuff to them. Whether they print
| the name or not, they know them. This seems pretty normal and
| reasonable for a "growth hack" and still preserved privacy.
| gruez wrote:
| >The names being present or not isn't really important as
| they just bought distribution lists and mailed stuff to them
|
| Based on my understanding they didn't even buy distribution
| lists. They just told USPS to deliver their ad to every house
| in a given zip code.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| Oh my god, get over it. They sent junk snail mail and included
| your name instead of "Current Resident." I must get 3 of these
| per day. It has zero impact on my life and goes direct into the
| trash.
| discardable_dan wrote:
| Junk mail has a massive ecological footprint.
| eli wrote:
| Compared to crypto?
| saalweachter wrote:
| Back of the envelope, they're roughly the same, CO2-wise.
| junon wrote:
| Brave has that too lol.
|
| https://brave.com/brave-rewards/
| dangrossman wrote:
| Junk mail is sequestered carbon that's been removed from
| the atmosphere.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Only if it's using recycled paper or wood from
| sustainably managed forest. Otherwise you're only moving
| the carbon around and not increasing the 'sequestered'
| carbon.
| dangrossman wrote:
| That's a given. Nobody's making paper by clearing old
| growth forests. 98% of virgin paper fiber is from fast
| growing softwoods in managed forests. The paper industry
| plants 1.7 million trees per day in the US. Increasing
| consumption of paper and lumber products from managed
| forests was one of IPCC's recommendations to the UN on
| climate change.
| Mister_Snuggles wrote:
| Where I live there is a community mailbox for the 60 units
| in the complex. At the mailbox is a recycling bin where we
| can put the junk mail. My neighbour takes care of the
| recycling bin and empties it every week. Based on the
| volume I get and the volume in the bin, I estimate that
| about half of the units dump the junk mail straight into
| the bin. I'm sure the rest eventually makes its way into
| recycling bags at each unit.
|
| Personally, I'm convinced that the recycling system as a
| whole requires a certain base amount of input material to
| even function and that junk mail serves a useful purpose by
| providing a good portion of that base amount of input
| material.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| I thought everyone knew by now that paper recycling is a
| scam? It doesn't happen. Not cost effective.
| gruez wrote:
| I thought that's plastic?
| notahacker wrote:
| The tracking beacons the mailshot was sent to tell people
| they should be worried about don't even need throwing in the
| trash...
|
| Brave is using a USPS commercial mailshot service which
| openly encourages the use of personally identifiable
| information to target unsolicited marketing (name, age,
| income(!) and other demographic info) to promote the idea it
| respects privacy and opposes collecting data to run ad
| campaigns for third parties. That's not a great look, and
| explaining that _actually_ this shouldn 't have been a
| problem because (like the customers of Facebook, Google and
| most display ad networks) the service they're paying keeps
| the targeting data to itself is probably even worse.
| pgt wrote:
| Junk mail affects my life.
| paulgb wrote:
| It seems like a weird mia culpa. If I'm understanding right,
| they're not sorry for sending the mailers, or working with a data
| broker to get the addresses, just for the fact that names were
| printed on the envelopes? I wonder who is concerned about the
| last one that isn't more concerned about the first two.
| boucher wrote:
| Yeah, I don't get it either. Is there anybody who doesn't get
| this kind of mail at home addressed to them by name all the
| time?
| smeej wrote:
| Not from companies I've never interacted with, no.
|
| I haven't done any of the extreme privacy things, but I do
| use a PO box for almost everything, and thus I really don't
| ever get anything addressed to my name sent to my actual
| residence.
| Firehawke wrote:
| Really? Because every time a new dentist office, grocery
| store, etc. opens up I get unsolicited mail from them to
| let me know they're now a thing in my neighborhood.
|
| Does it bother me? Not in the slightest. It's a community
| notice, and the Brave thing would only annoy me if it hit
| the levels that AOL CDs were at in the 90s.
| rpdillon wrote:
| > data broker
|
| If I'm understanding the EDDM tool correctly, the data broker
| appears to be the USPS.
| jayofdoom wrote:
| They didn't work with a data broker. You can pay the post
| office in the US to send your mailer to every single address in
| a given zip code. This sort of bulk mailing represents the
| majority of your junk mail.
| toma_caliente wrote:
| Having worked in marketing, they absolutely worked with a
| data broker. You don't blindly send out mailers. You use data
| brokers to zone in on a target market. "This zip code is more
| like to buy X while this zip code is more like to buy Y."
| dimitrios1 wrote:
| The USPS sells all the addresses themselves.
| concinds wrote:
| All direct mail marketers do this, because it allows better
| targeting (& re-targeting old prospects & previous
| customers) but Brave explicitly said they didn't, and only
| went through the USPS's service.
| js212 wrote:
| The USPS didn't mess up. They are clearly using some sort
| of vendor to send out the mail.
| thehonest wrote:
| Yip. The whole story is weird.
| ozten wrote:
| I don't envy the job of Brave marketers. Brave's "champion
| customers" are often people that hate any form of marketing, so
| every experiment risks alienating these key early adopters.
| charlfields wrote:
| I don't know if it was coincidence but I got two mailers the same
| week after I downloaded brave into my laptop, It freaked me out
| to think they already knew my address by just installing the
| browser. I hope everyone learns from this and use other methods
| of marketing for companies that market themselves as privacy
| first.
| mcculley wrote:
| > It freaked me out to think they already knew my address by
| just installing the browser
|
| Did you really think that? I would have considered it to more
| likely be a coincidence.
| echelon wrote:
| I would be very suspicious of mail coming from a company that
| touted privacy that had my name on it. Especially if I've never
| done business with them.
|
| Brave is in a weird market. Unless you pay for it, you're still
| the product.
|
| The best thing Brave or Mozilla could do would be to
| legislatively kill Chrome (and perhaps the iOS Safari-only
| policy).
|
| With control of browsers out of the hands of advertising agencies
| (Google), these companies could then raise their rates on an
| acceptable ads program sans the tracking. More revenue,
| sustainable market, and better for the world.
| WoahNoun wrote:
| So physical spam is their scaling plan?
| endless1234 wrote:
| Yeah, seems pretty desperate to me. "We couldn't get enough
| people to install our app, so we started sending them junk mail
| urging them to do so."
| [deleted]
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| Why does this process involve printing addresses at all?
|
| In Germany "you" (probably needs to be a company of some size) go
| to "the post office" (actual delivery probably directly to a
| distribution center), give them a stack of flyers, and say "one
| of these into each mailbox in this ZIP code, please".
|
| The mailman then takes a stack of said flyers and starts stuffing
| mailboxes as he goes along his route (excluding those mailboxes
| that have "no ads" stickers).
|
| This avoids the need to treat the spam as addressed mail, because
| you don't really care which person gets which of the (identical)
| flyer. This makes handling much easier and as a result, cheaper.
| user3939382 wrote:
| Probably to enable opt-out which most people don't use but is
| available at dmachoice.org
| gruez wrote:
| You're right, you don't need addresses to deliver ads to every
| household. However, addressed mail probably gets better
| engagement than unaddressed mail, so USPS/EDDM vendors allow
| you to insert the name/address of the recipient, based on
| whatever is in their database. Brave didn't intend for this
| option to be enabled, but due to some oversight it was enabled,
| hence why the ads had addresses on them.
| logicalmonster wrote:
| Many of the detracting comments here are making false claims
| about this incident. If you haven't made up your mind about this
| yet, I would like to urge seeking some other sources of
| information, including the first-hand posts from the Brave forums
| mentioned in the article about what their intent and practice
| here was, before fully making up your mind.
|
| Brave is both an advertising privacy company (has many enemies),
| crypto company (hated and piled on here), a search engine (many
| powerful enemies), and a browser (competitor with many big
| companies). You're going to get a lot of spin and FUD about them
| with anything in the news due to their nature.
| rhexs wrote:
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| He didn't donate to the wrong religion he donated to Prop 8 a
| proposal in California to ban same-sex marriage. Acting like
| same-sex marriage is a religion is bigoted and should not be
| tolerated here.
| VanTheBrand wrote:
| Prop 8 was the Mormons. I agree wrong religion is maybe
| confusing but that's both who was behind it and why he
| donated.
| My71staccount wrote:
| logicalmonster wrote:
| You know I forgot about that. On top of what else I
| mentioned, I think that's the biggest deal here. Brendan Eich
| is going to have the mob after him until the end of time and
| all comments about Brave need to be filtered through that
| lens.
|
| For what it's worth, Brave is not above harsh criticism, even
| in this specific incident. (I think this particular case is
| arguably pretty benign though given the details about the
| USPS program and their claim about their intended privacy
| practices. It's just a dumb thing to give your detractors the
| hammer to hit you with)
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| powersnail wrote:
| I trust that Brave doesn't have a database with residents' names
| and addresses, but the problem with the marketing stunt, is that
| the moment they have to explain that it's not actually nefarious,
| they've already lost.
|
| It's like making a misleading advertisement, but instead of
| misleading the users to trust them, it shocked the potential user
| base into a false sense of insecurity.
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